Friday, 22 February 2013

You were surely surprised when you heard the news about Oscar Pistorius being charged with murder, especially after reading about him in unit 3 in your books, where he was portrayed as an amazing athlete.

South Africans are in shock after their sprinter Oscar Pistorius was charged with the
murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Pistorius competed in the
London 2012 Olympics as the first double-amputee track athlete.

Watch the following interview, listen to my questions and answer them orally by sending me a VoiceMail. Try to give as many details as possible.

Tuesday, 19 February 2013

You've been doing lots of listening practice by watching videos in English Central, CNN News and other videos we've worked with in class.

I'm going to give you another chance to practice for the hard listening test this term.

Click on the image and go through the test. It can't take you more than 20 minutes. That means listening to each clip no more than twice. When you finish you must email me your results. Don't forget your name and email. To be able to interpret your results, you can click here where you'll find a chart with different assessment frameworks.

Monday, 4 February 2013

We are going to practise your oral skills by debating some controversial issues, which usually leads to spontaneous language production.

Watch the following video where useful advice is given:

Each group of 4 or 6 of you will be given a topic and time to think of arguments and reasons pro or con.You can research the topic, look up vocabulary... Then we'll follow the next scheme in the debate:

1)
Pro Team introduction and reasons;

2) Con Team introduction and
reasons;

3) open debate;

4) audience questions;

5) Pro Team conclusion;

6) Con Team conclusion.

The audience will determin the winners based on the group which presents the most convincing argument, on who communicated more clearly and refuted the opponent’s arguments best.

Sunday, 3 February 2013

I know I'm running a bit late with your homework this week, but I'm sure you won't mind...

Your next task has to do with news. Luckily for students of
English, nowadays there are thousands of websites where you can listen
to real English. The one I am presenting today, CNN StudentNews, is
especially interesting because it contains real updated news for
students. And the good thing is that if there's something you can't
understand you can always read the script.Each one of you will listen to one piece of news for one
particular day twice and will comment about it on the following
VoiceThread so that the rest of us will also know about it. Record a
one-two minute summary of your news and give your personal point of view
about it. Use your own words. Do not read from the script.